• A new TAG-72 cancer marker peptide identified by phage display

      Chen, Ling; Wang, Yi; Liu, Xinrong; Dou, Shuping; Liu, Guozheng; Hnatowich, Donald J.; Rusckowski, Mary (2008-12-08)
      Radiolabeled peptides as markers of cancer targets have demonstrated their value in diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy. The 16 mer f88-4/Cys6 phage display library was applied to affinity purified TAG-72 and three consensus peptides were identified: VHHSCTKLTHCCQNWH (A2-13), GGVSCMQTSPVCENNL (A2-6) and TKRDCSAQNYGCQKAI (A2-11). The A2-13 and A2-6 phages showed the highest percent binding to LS-174T cells by flow cytometry and were 3-fold higher than a control phage, while fluorescence microscopy showed that both A2-6 and A2-13 phages bound to the LS-174T cell membrane. However, only the A2-6 phage demonstrated specificity by low binding to the TAG-72 negative cell HT-29. Furthermore, the synthesized free A2-6 peptide demonstrated specific binding to LS-174T cells by flow cytometry and by immunohistochemical staining of xenograft tumor compared to normal colon. These data indicate that the A2-6 peptide is specific for the TAG-72 cancer target.
    • A specific heptapeptide from a phage display peptide library homes to bone marrow and binds to primitive hematopoietic stem cells

      Nowakowski, Grzegorz S.; Dooner, Mark S.; Valinski, Helen M.; Mihaliak, Alicia M.; Quesenberry, Peter J.; Becker, Pamela S. (2004-11-13)
      Phage display peptide libraries have enabled the discovery of peptides that selectively target specific organs. Selection of organ-specific peptides is mediated through binding of peptides displayed on phage coat protein to adhesion molecules expressed within targeted organs. Hematopoietic stem cells selectively home to bone marrow, and certain adhesion receptors critical to this function have been demonstrated. Using a phage display library, we identified a specific peptide that trafficked to murine bone marrow in vivo. We independently isolated exactly the same heptapeptide from the entire library by in vitro biopanning on primitive lineage-depleted, Hoechst 33342(dull)/rhodamine 123(dull) murine bone marrow stem cells and confirmed peptide binding to these cells by immunofluorescence studies. We demonstrated bone marrow-specific homing of the peptide by an in vivo assay in which the animals were injected with the phage displaying peptide sequence, and immunofluorescence analysis of multiple organs was performed. We also showed that the peptide significantly decreased the homing of stem cells to the bone marrow but not to the spleen 3 hours after transplantation using fluorescently labeled Lin(-)Sca(+) hematopoietic cells in an in vivo homing assay. The peptide sequence has a partial (5/7) amino acid sequence homology with a region of CD84. This discovery represents the first application of the phage display methodology to the bone marrow and stem cells and led to the identification of a specific heptapeptide that homes to bone marrow, binds to primitive stem cells, and plays a role in stem cell homing.
    • Accelerating protein docking in ZDOCK using an advanced 3D convolution library

      Pierce, Brian G.; Hourai, Yichiro; Weng, Zhiping (2011-09-01)
      Computational prediction of the 3D structures of molecular interactions is a challenging area, often requiring significant computational resources to produce structural predictions with atomic-level accuracy. This can be particularly burdensome when modeling large sets of interactions, macromolecular assemblies, or interactions between flexible proteins. We previously developed a protein docking program, ZDOCK, which uses a fast Fourier transform to perform a 3D search of the spatial degrees of freedom between two molecules. By utilizing a pairwise statistical potential in the ZDOCK scoring function, there were notable gains in docking accuracy over previous versions, but this improvement in accuracy came at a substantial computational cost. In this study, we incorporated a recently developed 3D convolution library into ZDOCK, and additionally modified ZDOCK to dynamically orient the input proteins for more efficient convolution. These modifications resulted in an average of over 8.5-fold improvement in running time when tested on 176 cases in a newly released protein docking benchmark, as well as substantially less memory usage, with no loss in docking accuracy. We also applied these improvements to a previous version of ZDOCK that uses a simpler non-pairwise atomic potential, yielding an average speed improvement of over 5-fold on the docking benchmark, while maintaining predictive success. This permits the utilization of ZDOCK for more intensive tasks such as docking flexible molecules and modeling of interactomes, and can be run more readily by those with limited computational resources.
    • Comparing two TAG-72 binding peptides previously identified by phage display as potential imaging agents

      Chen, Ling; Wang, Yi; Cheng, Dengfeng; Dou, Shuping; Liu, Xinrong; Liu, Guozheng; Hnatowich, Donald J.; Rusckowski, Mary (2011-10-01)
      AIM: To evaluate the targeting property in vitro and in vivo of two tumor-associated glycoprotein 72 (TAG-72) binding peptides, previously identified in this laboratory by phage selection using different elution conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The peptides GGVSCMQTSPVCENNL (A2-6) and NPGTCKDKWEICLLNGG (A3-10) were radiolabeled with technetium-99m ((99m)Tc) using N-hydroxysuccinimidyl-S-acetyl-mercaptoacetyltriglycine (NHS-MAG(3)) as a chelator or were biotinylated. The specificity of the two peptides for the TAG-72 positive LS-174T cancer cells was demonstrated in vitro both by flow cytometry analysis using the biotinylated peptides and by competitive binding using the (99m)Tc-labeled peptides. The in-vivo biodistributions of the peptides were evaluated in TAG-72 positive LS-174T tumor-bearing mice by small-animal single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography imaging. RESULTS: As evidence of specific binding, both peptides showed a significant increase in percentage binding with increasing peptide concentration by flow cytometry analysis to LS-174T cells, but not to TAG-72 negative HT-29 cells. The (99m)Tc-labeled A2-6 peptide bound LS-174T cells with an inhibition constant at 50% of 46.5 nmol/l compared with 420 nmol/l for the A3-10 peptide. In mice, accumulation of both peptides was highest in kidneys and gallbladder. Tumors were clearly visible by single photon emission computed tomography imaging for both (99m)Tc-labeled peptides through 60 min, although the tumor accumulation was higher for the A3-10 peptide. CONCLUSION: The A3-10 peptide, with lower, yet reasonable binding affinity compared with the A2-6 peptide, showed sufficiently favorable specific binding and tumor accumulation to be considered further as a potential imaging agent for TAG-72 positive cancers.